The Monster Retreats.

The Automotive world has a rich history of imitation, emulation, inspiration and outright forgery. Back in the seventies the Rover SD1 famously borrowed aspects of the Ferrari 365GTB/4, a successful endeavour which led to one of the most striking regular cars of the decade. At around that time De Tomaso were obviously dead keen on the Jaguar XJ6 as the lines of the Deauville demonstrated, and fifteen years later Toyota realised that the only way to beat the Germans at their own game was to base their product on a tried and tested formula. They chose the Mercedes S-Class and the resulting brand, Lexus, has been spectacularly successful.

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Missed Gears

Why, after being partially responsible for the first car ever to hit the road, and after a hundred years of vehicle production, many of which have passed into legend, can Mercedes-Benz still not produce a decent Manual Gearbox?

Mercedes have long had it in for fans of the row-your-own 'box, we can have a manual in some models if we're desperate, but we have to make do with a foot-operated parking brake neccesitating the rapid growth of a third foot if you want to perform a smooth hill-start. That's OK, it's a foible we have learnt to adjust to, even joke about with each other.

And it's not as if they seriously want to do away with them altogether, the new E-Class diesel is marketed heavily on the promise of low emissions, even lower when a slushbox is omitted. To remain class competitive you have to offer a nice modern six-speed gearbox, with nicely chosen ratios to compliment the power delivery of the car. On paper MB have done just this.

But it's terrible.

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